Scots-Irish political stew

Make no mistake about it, I have no time for hyphenated Americans, be they African-, Italian-, French-, Asian-, Jewish-, Muslim-, or Gay-, it makes no difference to me. Take your hyphen and shove it.

James Webb, former Secretary of the Navy, writing in the Wall Street Journal, mentions a new group of hyphenated Americans that are poorly understood by politicians: Scots-Irish.

In the piece, Webb smacks down Charles Krauthammer for using an ethnic slur directed at this mongrel group of Americans. Webb says:

[The] most vicious ethnic slur of the presidential campaign came from Charles Krauthammer, after Howard Dean suggested that the Democrats needed to reach out to the "guys with the Confederate flags on their pickup trucks." Mr. Krauthammer, who has never complained about this ethnic group when it has marched off to fight the wars he wishes upon us, wrote that Mr. Dean "wants the white trash vote . . . that's clearly what he meant," and that he was pandering to "rebel-yelling racist rednecks.

Pardon me, but as Larry the Cable Guy would say, "I don't care where you're from ... that's funny."

Have all our hyphen wearers forgotten the United States is a melting, not a stew, pot? A place where we're suppose to form an integrated society? The American Heritage Dictionary quips: “Canadians... liked to think of their country as a mosaic rather than a melting pot” (Kenneth McNaught). Do we want to be as fractious as our Canadian neighbors in our desire to Balkanize our country into ethnic pockets? Who among us believes that our society, our civilization, is improved by tribalization?

And yes, I understand the importance of honoring one's heritage, but wearing a merit badge in divisiveness is something all together different.

And yes, there is a natural tendency for people to clannishly gather, or as Plato said, "likes attract likes." There's also a tendency for people to gather for spectacle, be they fires or lynchings. It does not follow that society should not suppress urges for folks to gather to feast on the misfortune of some or to huddle together and exclude others not like themselves.